Talk:Reactive armour

error in image
im purty sure I go tit worng. let me know if the signs are wrong, the movement of current always confuses me too, I knwo that should be electrn flow so I htin its okay.Wolfmankurd 22:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

The text contains the following sentence: "Though it was once quite common for a dozen or so infantrymen to ride on the outside of a tank's hull, this is not done with ERA plated vehicles—for obvious reasons."

The alleged link between external ridership and ERA is unconvincing. It is certainly not 'obvious'. Sitting on an ERA plate when it explodes is indeed a hazard to life. However, it is hardly relevant since sitting on the impact zone of an anti-tank missile is also lethal.

What do others think? Bobblewik (talk) 18:25, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * You are quite correct. Any hit which would set off ERA would also be hazardous to anyone riding the tank anyway. Besides, modern ERA explosion doesn't even necessarily destroy the box it's in. --Mikoyan21 14:39, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * There's a lot more explosive in an ERA box than in a typical incoming warhead, and there is a serious fragmentation and blast damage risk to those standing or sitting nearby. The US doesn't typically let people ride tanks because tanks attract fire, and people fall off and get run over fairly often (a serious hazard in training, and a significant hazard in combat), and the US has plenty of Humvees and M-2 IFVs.  Other countries tended to both want to reduce training injuries and keep people away from the ERA blocks, and restricted tank riding at the same time.  You saw it a bit in Chechenyia with Russian tanks, but they lost a fair number of infantry to the secondary ERA explosions and stopped doing it.


 * I support putting the article back for that reason... Georgewilliamherbert 21:38, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

From memory, T54 and T55 used to be very similar. In my (albeit somewhat outdated) experience, the greatest difference between T54 and T55 was that the gun in T54 had only vertical gyro stabilization while in T55 it was stabilized both vertically and laterally. One unintended consequence of the lateral stabilzation was that, if one forgot to switch it off when going back on the road, the turret (and the gun) could end up pointing sideways thus collecting telegraph poles or anything else in that direction.

Can someone find a picture or diagram of this?

This? Wolfmankurd 17:08, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Electric Reactive Armor
I recently saw a Discovery Channel program that featured Electric reactive armor technology. I think the program was called "Weapons of the 21st Century", or something like that.

In the program, they tested slabs of Electric reactive armor mounted like side skirts on an English Warrior armored vehicle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrior_Tracked_Armoured_Vehicles

On the side, they placed an RPG rocket facing directly into the reactive armor.

They detonated RPG rounds 3 times into the armor, and the armor didn't appear damaged, even though the narrator remarked that the armor slabs only had "dents."

If this is so, then the diagram in the article here somewhat appears different since the RPG didn't even penetrate or make a hole.

Im not gonna change anything in the article here, but it really made me think about its function. Jak722 22:20, 11 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I have personally seen electric reactive armor (also called 'electromagnetic armor') hit by an RPG. The outer layer gets holed by the jet, and dented by the explosion of the charge. The key is what happens to the jet between the two plates; it gets disrupted so that it either doesn't come out the back side or it comes out incoherently. -Amatulic 03:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Added several references to the Electric Armor Section. Since multiple terms might be in use, I think I'll also add a (also known as) comment to that effect. Mgmirkin 06:13, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

References I added: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/08/54641 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,539143,00.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/08/19/nmod19.xml http://itvibe.com/news/2627/ http://www.armedforces-int.com/categories/electric-armour/new-age-electric-armour-tough-enough-to-face-modern-threats.asp http://www.defense-update.com/features/du-1-04/reactive-armor.htm http://www.defense-update.com/features/du-1-04/passive-armor.htm Will assume these are uncontroversial (several by Wired and respectable news outlets, several by armed forces/technology watchdog sites, I assume). Mgmirkin 06:13, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Oops, forgot to add the ITvibe.com site as a reference. Added it. Also forgot to mention I removed the "This section doesn't cite any references" tag. Hope nobody minds. Plenty of valid references now! Mgmirkin

Have also redirected common alternate terms (electric armor, electromagnetic armor, electric reactive armor, electromagnetic reactive armor) here, as well as alternate spellings of alternate terms (armor and armour). Hope that's all relatively non-controversial. If not, feel free to controvert it & note why. Mgmirkin 06:33, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of which... Is it technically electric armour or armor? Currently the article uses the British spelling with an OUR, but I'm wondering if this should use the American spelling with only the OR suffix? Petty question, but probably valid. How does one know which takes precedent? Don't want to start a row over British vs. American English. Doesn't matter to me. Just not sure which is more correct or more prevalent. How does one decide? Mgmirkin 06:33, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Spelling
Is it just me or isn't it kind of weird that the article is 'Reactive armour' but almost every other instance of the article, 'armour' is spelt 'armor'? Shouldn't the English spelling with the 'u' be used? --Remy Suen 11:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yup. Going back through the history, it looks like the article was always a mix, from the very beginning.  We should pick one spelling and tidy up the article:  British, U.S., or my preference: Canadian English.  I'll harmonize the article text with the title, anyway.  —Michael Z. 2006-08-04 14:43 Z 


 * Wikipedia policy is that the dialect the article was started with is the precedent for that article and for that article only, except when it is relevant to only a particular english-speaking region, in which case the local dialect takes precedent. Sojourner001 (talk) 19:44, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

reactive armor is already being used
I read about an aircraft carrier, that utilizes this kind of armor. I don't know it's lemma, but it was an article in the english wikipedia. 92.227.179.176 (talk) 19:46, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Distroyer1 13:34, 7 October 2007 (UTC) I have a friend who works in a factory that armors american trucks and jeeps for iraq. they are using electronic reactive armor for over 3 years

Generally the UK uses Electric Armor (EA) and the US uses Electro Magnetic Armor (EMA) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sevun (talk • contribs) 17:43, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Short video about electric reactive armour
This site: [] has a short video about electric reactive armour.Agre22 (talk) 15:15, 6 April 2009 (UTC)agre22

Electric Reactive Armour - encyclopedic or Science Fiction ?
OK, so it's 2011 - did Electric Reactive Armour actually happen ? We have had lots of Snatch Landrovers blown up in Afghanistan, and replaced with something beefier, IIRC. I haven't heard Electric RA mentioned in the last couple of years. I'm tempted to call bullshit on Electric RA and delete the section !

I don't think Wikipedia should be speculating on future developments which may or may not happen. It seems odd that this section has 7 citations whereas the rest of the article that is established technology only has 2 ! "Methinks the lady doth protest too much".

U.S. Military Uses the Force (Wired News) 2002 publication.
 * ... stops the jets by zapping them with tens of thousands of amps of current. This vaporizes some of the deadly copper jets ...

'Star Trek' shields to protect supertanks (The Guardian) 2002 publication.
 * ... use powerful magnets to melt and destroy incoming missiles and shells ...
 * ... using electrical fields ...
 * ... plating that is more than 2ft thick ...
 * ... capacitors inside the tank which would send a mighty electrical current surging through the metal coils at the base of the smart armour ...
 * ... 800 millimetres of steel armour ...

'Electric armour' vaporises anti-tank grenades and shells link dead - now
 * ... highly-charged capacitor that is connected to two separate metal plates on the tank's exterior ...
 * ... jet of molten copper penetrates both plates. This makes a connection and thousands of amps vaporises the molten copper ...

MoD Develops 'Electric Armour' error - it/web blog removed

New Age Electric Armor - Tough enough to face modern threats link dead - now (March 2010)
 * ... researchers are working ...

Add-On - Reactive Armor Suits
 * ... Explosive Reactive armor ...

not electric ! removed

Advanced Add-on Armor for Light Vehicles 2004
 * ... Further in the future ... electromagnetic armor, which deforms and reshapes the penetrating rounds or plasma jet ...
 * ... United Defense expects that the concept could mature in a few years, if adequate funding is made available ...

--195.137.93.171 (talk) 08:56, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Electric Reactive Armour - better sources
For some reason my web connection will only allow me to post a small section - sorry! I'm not adding these links because I don't think blue-sky research is encyclopedic.

One should bear in mind that stuff that works will remain classified, and unclassified documents will only contain stuff that doesn't work. There will also be a certain amount of mis-information to baffle the enemy (eg "eat carrots to improve night vision - radar? what radar?")

Some projects will always be used to attract more research funding - they will rarely be abandoned, even when clearly hopeless.

I believe Richard Feynman also used the example of a nuclear aircraft as a boondoggle project that would (obviously to a technical person) always remain in the research phase, and never actually work. See Nuclear aircraft and Convair X-6 !

Googling [Electric armour site:dstl.gov.uk] turns up some interesting stuff - in Annual Reports and Accounts, and a Powerpoint presentation ! The images of the test match the LiveLeaks video

Just to keep up with the UK MoD, the Yanks also trumpeted a successful trial in 2005
 * ... The EMA package successfully defeated a shaped charge threat during live fire testing Feb. 22 at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland...

Then the Brits bought the company and re-trumpeted the success as their own.

However it remained to be developed as of 19th May 2008 Designed for the requirements of tomorrow delivered today
 * future technologies that are not fully developed today, such as: electric armour, fuel cells, electric guns and remote control etc.

--195.137.93.171 (talk) 11:06, 28 April 2011 (UTC)--195.137.93.171 (talk) 08:56, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Electric Reactive armour - energy requirements
How much energy is needed?

The Powerpoint says

7.62mm sniper round = 4000 Joules of energy (would move a man at 1mph !)

RPG7 round has 347% of the energy areal density of a 120mm APFSDS

Scaling the areas (120x120)/(7.62x7.62) = 248x

4000J * 248 * 347% = 3440000 J

So, 3 MegaJoules.

The biggest capacitors I know are for Car Audio.

eg http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/314432.pdf

The biggest weigh a kilogram, and store &lt; 10 Joules in almost a litre of volume.

I really have little faith that technology will bring the energy density down by 1000x.

It might be best to move the 'Electric Armour' section from the main topic to its discussion page.

Feel free ! --195.137.93.171 (talk) 12:12, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

HEAT Rounds Not Very Hot
The metal jet in a shaped-charge warhead moves extremely rapidly, but it remains a metallic fluid at all times - no plasma is ever formed in the metallic jet itself! This is the only way in which it can remain dense enough to penetrate armor. If it were heated to the temperature required to form even a weak plasma, it would try to expand on its own, thus disrupting the shape of the jet and reducing the penetration depth. See the "HEAT" wiki page for a good discussion of this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.55.200.20 (talk) 20:24, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was not moved. --BDD (talk) 17:32, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Reactive armour → Reactive armor – The entire article uses the spelling without the U, and was that way in the original version of the article as well. —Torchiest talkedits 14:21, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Question - not immediately relevant to move to US spelling, but any idea how long has the Category:Vehicle armour been redlinked as "Category:Vehicle armor"? Seems a bit odd. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:28, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks like all the spellings, including the category, were changed in this edit. I'll fix the cat. —Torchiest talkedits 16:55, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment - the article started out under "Armour" and "Armor", this edit changed it: JoshuSasori (talk) 02:09, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That edit was from 2006. I think it's been changed back and forth a few times, but the 2002 original article was "armor". —Torchiest talkedits 02:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Support per nom, WP:RETAIN. -- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 06:06, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Wow, that doesn't seem to apply at all, the usage is totally inconsistent, the title is one way and the article text is another way. JoshuSasori (talk) 04:02, 8 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Support - one way or the other must be used. The initial usage was inconsistent, so WP:RETAIN does not apply. The current active editors favour "armor". Thus, let it be "armor". JoshuSasori (talk) 04:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose. As far as I can see, the article has always been titled using the British spelling. That being the case, and considering there's no good reason to favour one version of English over another in this subject, it should be the content that's altered to suit, not the title. Incidentally, our generic article is at armour. -- Necrothesp (talk) 20:52, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * There has been some fiddling around with the articles, see here and here. —Torchiest talkedits 21:00, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. Apart from the initial two stub versions, which consistently used armor, the spelling in the early versions of this article is mixed. The first time a non-stub version had consistent spelling of armor/armour was in 2005, using armour, but note favor was unchanged. In recent years, the article has usually been mainly or consistently in British English. The recent article–title discrepancy was introduced on 2012-10-06 with these two edits that converted all British spellings to American ones.  It appears that the article has always existed at Reactive armour, though there was a history merge with Reactive armor (dated 2009-07-29). Whether it's moved or not, the outcome of this RM should determine this article's spelling. SSR (talk) 07:11, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose after reading Some standardized rigour's comments, the article text should also be moved back to "armour". JoshuSasori (talk) 11:13, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose as per SSR's comments. The edits made at violated WP:ENGVAR and the spelling in the article should be restored to armour. Zarcadia (talk) 15:40, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Back plate?
Wait, the back plate traveling backward is supposed to help mitigate the explosion? How is this acheived? By installing it with spacers and having it explode against the hull? Granted even a few inches would help, but I always thought it was fixed directly to the armor, and the back plate stayed stationary. AnnaGoFast (talk) 06:49, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

All AT weapons pierce armour?
The opening paragraph suggests that "Essentially all anti-tank munitions work by piercing the armour"; I'd strongly suggest that's not true in particular for High-explosive squash head rounds which don't pierce armour at all. Jellyfish dave (talk) 22:22, 7 March 2022 (UTC)


 * You're right that not "all" AT weapons are intended to penetrate armor- squash rounds are one counter example, as well as things like Molotov cocktails or other large incendiary weapons. However, the two *main* threats to tanks on the modern battlefield are dense penetrators, like the M829 APFSDS, and high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) weaponry, which relies on creating an explosively formed penetrator (EFP). By far, the most common threat is HEAT EFPs, as this concept forms the basis of all modern rocket and missile based anti-tank weapons. Squash rounds are effectively defeated these days by composite or gapped armor and spall liners, and where carried are more intended to be used as high explosive rounds to defeat bunkers and obstacles rather than attacking other tanks.
 * If I were to re-write the offending paragraph, I would say something like: "Essentially all modern anti-tank munitions are designed to pierce the armor by concentrating force at a point, and reactive armors are designed to disrupt that physical process of concentration. Reactive armor defeats explosively formed penetrators by disrupting the jet of molten metal, and defeats kinetic penetrators by shattering or yawing the penetrator, so that in both cases the force of the attack is spread across a larger area than intended. Reactive armour can be defeated with multiple hits in the same place, such as by tandem-charge weapons, which fire two or more shaped charges in rapid succession. If vehicle armor is penetrated then weapon fragments enter the vehicle at high velocity and bounce around, killing the crew inside, disabling vital mechanical systems, or both." 165.134.222.240 (talk) 20:33, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

Is SLERA real?
From what I see in the article and in some web sources with suspiciously similar text, SLERA is presented like it's really a different type of ERA. But are there really any working systems and reliable sources to claim that it's totally real and has its use? I've only found some mentions in media, nothing verifiable. RajatonRakkaus (talk) 11:59, 26 July 2023 (UTC)


 * https://patents.google.com/patent/US7360479B2/en 88.97.228.233 (talk) 02:03, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
 * "B. Self-Limiting Explosive Reactive Armor (SLERA):
 * Self-Limiting ERA provides reasonable performance, substantially better than NERA (see below), though less than ERA, with reduced effects on vehicle structures, as compared to ERA. The energetic material layer in SLERA has the potential of being classified as a passive material (NATO specification). SLERA can provide good multiple-hit capability in modular configuration. Thus, while the energetic material used in SLERA is not as effective as fully detonable explosives, this type of reactive armor may provide a more practical option than ERA owing to its survivability characteristics." 88.97.228.233 (talk) 02:05, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Expert.
I'm not sure what it is, but I feel as if we need a Military Expert to revise this article. BeeboMan (talk) 23:22, 15 October 2023 (UTC)